Rotating Wall Clouds Reports & TOR's

[Joe Nield]

" If you report a wall cloud in an area where the radar is showing NIL rotation they will probably cross check it with other spotters in the area or send a sheriff's deputy out to check it out."

They certainly would ask the hams to have others check it out, but they clearly do _not_ dispatch police officers...

Not directly, absolutely, but, in cross checking, we will often ask dispatchers to contact deputies in the area for corroboration.

 

[Kurt Hulst]

Hey nick go to a Sky warn class in your area and at the meeting ask them the same question you posted here. More often than not Skywarn classes are taught by NWS Mets.

 

[rdale]

"A warning will always be issued when a spotter reports a tornado"

Not at all... If the report doesn't match the meteorology and the forecast isn't convinced, he won't.

"The National Weather Service does an excellent job issuing warnings which is why I always chuckle when Accuweather says they should take that process over."

Not to get off-topic, but AW has never said that. They want NWS to get out of duplicating private sector forecasting, not warning issuance.

 

[rdale]

Severe Weather Warnings are not issued on radar alone. It requires "situational awareness" and "multi-sensor" use. You have to know what's going on in the environment. You have to know what type of storms are expected and then modify that if needed as storms develop. You have to know expected storm motion. You have to wait satellite. You have to monitor the storms upstream. You have to look at mesoscale plots of surface conditions.

The point is that you NEVER sit down at a radarscreen and start rattling off warnings without having other info. Will an office mess up? Sure! May 13th DTX issued a Tornado Warning for an EMPTY radar screen over Owosso! There had been a F0 about 30 minutes earlier and the report was delayed, and for some reason they still issued a warning even though the shower was almost out of the county. We can all pull examples of something going wrong - hopefully those involved learn (but in this case Detroit's official response was that different mets can interpret situations differently - ouch.)

- Rob

 

[Kurt Hulst]

AS far as i know Nick there was only one tornado report with this system on the 25th and that was the vermontville tornado southwest of Lansing. They did post a few warning after that because they were still seeing rotation but it was with in the squall line. The year of 2003 the same date a torando dropped south of Battle creek MI, i was on the north side of that cell but i dont remember hearing a torn warning. it was 2 years ago so they probably did. memory lapse lol